Snow that is.

I have to say I’m quite disappointed by my disappointment in snow. I think it comes from the fact that I imagined snow everywhere to be magical and romantic, but didn’t consider that life goes on even when snow is thick on the ground. And I’m tired of trying to get on with life with snow about! If we were forced to stay inside and admire it, then I would probably not be disgruntled by this week’s snowfall.

Someone who is beside himself with today’s snowfall is Stu. It’s his birthday today (or yesterday, depending on your longitude) and it’s forecast to snow all week! He has gone to bed hoping that it snows overnight so there’ll be ‘a gazillion’ cm of snow to wake up to.

He took a video of it falling today:

(Extra special mention needs to be made about capturing the ‘mawp mawp’ of the police car/truck/something bossy)

Happy Birthday Stu!

March 9 also signifies 1 month until we touch down in Tassie. Time is going by fast, we better savour our time here while there’s some left!

Elly xx

Hi all,

I kinda feel bad for talking yet again about going home (6 weeks! Oh, did I say that?), but as you can imagine, it’s been on our minds quite a bit lately.

I distinctly remember sitting in Steve and Marie Pearce’s loungeroom about 12 months ago discussing our expectations for the trip to Bulgaria. (Steve and Marie work with WEC and they generously offered to take us through some of WEC’s “preparing for living OS” material.) Well, recently, we’ve been discussing the opposite – what we’re expecting when we return.

This post isn’t about those gruesome details, but it was interesting to realise that we feel slightly apprehensive that “home” may not feel as wonderful as we’ve imagined it in every homesick moment for the last 9 months! This is irrational, of course. A result of having far too much time to think about it! But it lead to me thinking up a short list of highly important, but little things that we’re looking forward to being reacquainted with.

1. Coffee! It’s not surprising that this is the first thing on my list, right? I wrote about the coffee situation here, suffice to say that the things I love about coffee – fresh roasts, diverse origins, a well-made flat white – simply aren’t found here. I complain about it, but we nevertheless do enjoy Bulgarian coffee, amongst other cafe offerings.

2. Shopping that makes sense! Elly said she can’t wait to be able to go into a clothing store and see things that look nice, and feel comfortable enough to ask to try them on, and to be able to explain what she might be looking for… and so on. It’s a combination of cultural differences, the language barrier and fashion from the ’80s (and not the cool part of the ’80s which is “retro” now).

3. Growing something! Some people think dirt is disgusting. I can’t wait to get it under my nails as I get back into gardening. Okay, so I had a measly pot of coriander and dill during summer, but I’m talking about dirt I can dig in! Eating some home-grown vegies is something I’m certainly looking forward to. Sam and Dani: want me to build you a vegie patch?

4. Texting! After we’d been here long enough to forget some of the details of what life in Ausland was like, we realised that almost all of our social engagements were initiated by SMS. I must have sent less than 5 since we got here. It just seems like a fiddly, unreliable means of communicating, when phone calls are cheap or free! But it’ll be good to get back into.

5. Driving! I haven’t driven a car this hemisphere. I was all for giving it a go – in fact, at one stage we were considering getting a Lada – but then we saw a nasty head-on collision on the highway one night… and that turned us off the idea. Implicit in this list item is that I’m soooo looking forward to drivers who occasionally consider that wanton recklessness could lead to a painful death. Do Australian drivers still know that?

6. High fidelity! We’ve been enjoying a lot of new music this year. It only struck me this week that we really haven’t heard any of it through decent speakers. It’s either been headphones (eugh!), laptop speakers (double eugh!), or the external computer speakers we bought (not bad). I have a feeling that hearing music on some big fat speakers again is going to blow our minds (and eardrums).

7. Rain! It’s mid-Feb, so we’re almost finished our winter, yet we haven’t had a proper soaking for months! We had quite a dry autumn (not sure if that’s usual here; I prefer Tassie’s windy and wet autumns) and then it got cold. Which meant it snowed. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow, but when we got caught in a nice early-spring storm last weekend, I realised how much I like (and miss) rain.

Here’s a bit of a photographic suspense-mystery-thriller-romantic comedy* for you.

This is a typical view from our apartment balcony (in summer):

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Here’s the part of the picture I want to draw your attention to. Our gorgeous disused power plant:

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Here’s what it looks like at the moment… notice anything missing?

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Well, of course, I assured Elly that power plant cooling towers don’t just go missing! So of course it had to be a result of the 10cm snowfall we had the night before, combined with sub-zero temperatures, combined with a slight wind blowing against the side of the cooling tower we could see from our apartment. Completely plausible!

But since it was a sunny Sunday and a balmy minus 4 degrees, we decided to go for a walk to investigate. Did you know that it can be quite sunny, yet remain below zero? I didn’t.

Here’s what we saw last time we walked there (with Humf):

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And here’s what we saw on this occasion:

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But we weren’t quite sure, so we went a bit closer this time:

They knocked down HOW many tonnes on concreteness??

We can only assume they were able to dismantle and sell it. Check your local Trading Post this week for a bargain cooling tower:

Dale: Dad, someone’s selling a Nuclear Cooling Tower.

Dad: How much are they askin’?

Dale: Mill’yun Leva.

Dad: Tell ‘em they’re dreaming!

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* = I promised to throw in some romantic comedy, so it’s just as well I can wish Elly a

Happy 4th Wedding Anniversary today! Hi Elly. You’re nice. I kinda like you.